Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change

by Thompson, Allen; Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy

• ISBN13: 9780262517652
• ISBN10: 0262517655
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-09
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Predictions about global climate change have produced both stark scenarios of environmental catastrophe and purportedly pragmatic ideas about adaptation. This book takes a different perspective, exploring the idea that the challenge of adapting to global climate change is fundamentally an ethical one, that it is not simply a matter of adapting our infrastructures and economies to mitigate damage but rather of adapting ourselves to realities of a new global climate. The challenge is to restore our conception of humanity--to understand human flourishing in new ways--in an age in which humanity shapes the basic conditions of the global environment. In the face of what we have unintentionally done to Earth's ecology, who shall we become? The contributors examine ways that new realities will require us to revisit and adjust the practice of ecological restoration; the place of ecology in our conception of justice; the form and substance of traditional virtues and vices; and the organizations, scale, and underlying metaphors of important institutions. Topics discussed include historical fidelity in ecological restoration; the application of capability theory to ecology; the questionable ethics of geoengineering; and the cognitive transformation required if we are to "think like a planet."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Adapting Humanity	p. 1
Adapting Restoration to Climate Change	p. 25
Nature Restoration as a Paradigm for the Human Relationship with Nature	p. 27
Environmental Virtues and the Aims of Restoration	p. 47
Global Warming and Virtues of Ecological Restoration	p. 63
History, Novelty, and Virtue in Ecological Restoration	p. 81
Integrating Ecology into the Virtue of Justice	p. 103
The Death of Restoration?	p. 105
Animal Flourishing and Capabilities in an Era of Global Change	p. 123
Environment as Meta-capability: Why a Dignified Human Life Requires a Stable Climate System	p. 145
Justice, Ecological Integrity, and Climate Change	p. 165
Adjusting Character to a Changing Environment	p. 185
Ethics, Public Policy, and Global Warming	p. 187
The Virtue of Responsibility for the Global Climate	p. 203
Rethinking Greed	p. 223
Are We the Scum of the Earth? Climate Change, Geoengineering, and Humanity's Challenge	p. 241
Reorganizing Institutions to Enable Human Virtue	p. 261
The Sixth Mass Extinction Is Caused by Us	p. 263
Human Values and Institutional Responses to Climate Change	p. 281
Alienation and the Commons	p. 299
Thinking like a Planet	p. 317
About the Contributors	p. 335
Index	p. 337
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